Power Consumption & Temperatures

Compared to a standard non-overclocked Radeon HD 6870, the HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X consumed 8% more power under load. The factory-overclocked HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo also used 7% more power than a standard card. The idle results for both graphics cards were similar to that of reference cards.

The HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X Crossfire configuration used 9% more power under load than standard 6870 Crossfire cards. With a load consumption of 465 watts, the HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X Crossfire cards consumed 2% less power than the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990.

Meanwhile, the HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo Crossfire configuration provided a total system power consumption of 408 watts, which was 7% more than the standard 6850 Crossfire cards under load. Interestingly, a pair of HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo Crossfire cards consumed roughly the same amount of power under load as a single GeForce GTX 580.

HIS claims a 13-degree temperature reduction for the HIS Radeon HD 6850 IceQ X Turbo compared to a standard card and we saw a 14% drop in temperature. This is a great result especially considering how quiet the card operated.

The HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X is said to be 15 degrees cooler though we only saw a 13-degree reduction, still a positive result taking into account the overclock.

When placed in Crossfire mode we had two expansion slots separating each graphics card and it appears that this was enough to avoid seeing a temperature increase under load.